Maybe There Weren't 30,000 Pages of Emails

How could Gen. John Allen be such great pen pals with Jill Kelley that they exchanged 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails? An Allen defender says they were not involved ("Allen has never been alone with Jill Kelley") and that number has been wildly overstated.

How could Gen. John Allen be such great pen pals with Jill Kelley that they exchanged 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails? An Allen defender says they were not involved ("Allen has never been alone with Jill Kelley") and that number has been wildly overstated. Allen was drawn into the Petraeus Affair when he forwarded "one of these weird, threatening" emails from Paula Broadwell about Jill Kelley to Kelley, accoriding to a source of The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorfwho he describes as a "U.S. official familiar with the investigation who wasn't willing to be described with any more specificity than that." But that's just one email -- what about the reports of thousands of others? The source tells Friedersdorf that it was "a couple hundred pages of email correspondence over several years" and that many involved answering the Tampa socialite's questions on how to "facilitate her travel to events abroad by invitation of the Afghan government." NBC News' Chuck Todd reports that Allen was merely cc'd on many emails between Kelley and Allen's wife. Initial reports said Allen's correspondence with Kelley was "potentially inappropriate." The Associated Press later reported they were "flirtatious." The source says that's because Allen and his wife are friends with Kelley, and that Allen innocently uses terms of endearment with all kinds of people.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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